Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2944: Reentry Part 1 – Speed And Trajectory

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“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”

I hope I am not getting ahead of myself (maybe I am because I am for the most part an optimist) but I think it is time to begin thinking and talking about “reentry” from this year we have spent away from others, isolated, sheltered and sometimes even quarantined.  In order to talk about “reentry”, we need to capture a metaphor to explore.  Let’s use one that is familiar to all of us; the reentry of vehicles that go into space and then return to Earth.  The Space scientists use the term “fall” when they speak of their spacecrafts coming back into the earth’s atmosphere.  How the returning vehicle comes through the layer of our atmosphere is very important.  Falling into the atmosphere at too steep of a decline causes the speed and the friction of our atmosphere to heat up the exterior of the vehicle to the point that it can catch fire and burn up.  Yet, coming in too shallow of a descent can cause our atmosphere to act as a barrier causing the vehicle to “skip” off like when we skip a stone across the water of a pond.  So, the descent and rate of speed for reentry is very important.  Right now, many companies and leaders are trying to discern what the speed and angle of reentry into the workplace should be.  They are concerned about going too fast and they are concerned about being too slow or not deliberate enough. Important decisions are soon to be made.

Speed and trajectory shows up all the times in our lives.  Too fast and too sharp can be really dangerous in how we conduct ourselves.  What I have learned is that when I am in doubt about something, that God is the first place to turn and then secondly to those whom I trust for Godly and learned advice and counsel.  The astronaut doesn’t make the decisions on her/his own. Behind them are hundreds if not thousands of people whose combined knowledge and competence, coupled with technology, lead them home at just the right speed and trajectory.  As we think about reentry back into what our new normal will be, let’s be sure that we are handing over the control of our speed and trajectory to Him.  He will keep us safe and guide us to where we need to be.

Reference: Hebrews 10:24-25 (New Living Translation)